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From lecture halls to workshops: universities make their move into FE

For years, the further education sector has been the ‘poor relation’ – looking with envy on universities’ funding. Now, colleges have a fight to stop HE seizing their higher-level technical education, writes Julia Belgutay

The fortunes of the higher and further education sectors have, in recent years, seemed to be heading in opposite directions.

A 2015 report by the Policy Exchange thinktank pointed out that, since 2009-10, overall university income had increased by 26 per cent, while the adult skills budget had been cut by 24 per cent.

Universities were, it added, “sitting on significant financial reserves, and public spending is currently skewed too much towards higher education to the detriment of further education”.

In the subsequent two years, however, Tes has uncovered a surprising shift in the behaviour ...

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